This year has seen a big upgrade in quality from most phone companies: Samsung’s new Galaxy Note doesn’t explode, Apple’s iPhone has a radical redesign, the OnePlus 5 is lovely, and LG’s V30 is shaping up to be a strong contender. If you love technology, you love it for precisely this inexorable march toward better, faster, and prettier devices. But one thing that’s different about the best smartphones of 2017 is that the price of admission is going up... Read More
As Apple likely predicted, it appears a large number of prospective iPhone buyers are waiting until the iPhone X goes up for preorder in late October rather than purchasing the more readily available iPhone 8, which launches Friday. Noted Apple watcher and industry analyst firm KGI Securities put out a report today, detailed by 9to5Mac, explaining how the existence of the iPhone X... Read More
Apple’s iOS 11 Golden Master — the final version of the software — leaked earlier this weekend, providing an avalanche of revelations about the products that the company is expected to announce on Tuesday, including the name of the next big iPhone, LTE connectivity for the Apple Watch, and animated emoji. There’s been some new revelations about the 3D face scanner, wireless charging, and an interesting fact about the Apple TV.
Face ID
We’ve learned a bit about Face ID — which will allow you to unlock your phone by looking at it — but Brazillian iOS developer Guiherme Rambo found some new details. It appears that you can use Face ID to not only unlock your phone, but also use it to confirm purchases in iTunes and the App Store, as well... Continue reading…
Samsung Display makes the best smartphone OLED screens in the world, as evidenced most recently by the Galaxy S8 and Note 8. So it makes total sense that Apple is putting a heavy reliance on the company to supply displays for the upcoming top-tier iPhone set to be announced on Tuesday, which will herald Apple’s shift to OLED technology for its flagship smartphone. According to the well-sourced KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Samsung’s position as the one and only supplier of displays for the iPhone 8 (or whatever it ends up being called) has put the company in a powerful position. AppleInsider reported on Kuo’s note to investors.
As the next iPhone event nears, no other company is capable of producing phone-sized OLED displays at the same... Continue reading…
Researchers at the University of Washington are developing a simple way to assess potential concussions and other brain injuries with just a smartphone. The team has developed an app called PupilScreen that uses video and a smartphone's camera flash...
Following its April post-mortem on its platform’s role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook is out with some juicy new details. Most noteworthy given the public’s intense interest in all things Russian is the fact that potential pro-Kremlin entities apparently purchased as much as $150,000 in political ads on the platform between 2015 and 2017. As Facebook Chief… Read More
As the inevitable launch of theGoogle Pixel 2nears, yet another leak has surfaced. This time, the smaller Walleye model makes an appearance in a series of heavily blurred images. Well, parts of the rumored device.
A source has come forward with leaked images that show off select chunks of the device’s front and back. Of what we can actually make out that isn’t obscured is the phone's front-facing camera, which looks to be in a similar location to last year’s Google Pixel.
Reminiscent in design to the Google Nexus 6P, the new leak shows off one of the Google Pixel 2's two front-facing speakers in the photo. Credit: 9to5GoogleFlipped over on its back, the fingerprint sensor pokes through the blur, showcasing a grey color flanked by what looks to be black aluminum.
Up top, the camera is in a familiar location to today’s Pixel devices: offset to the right and stuck next to a flash on its left.
The big differences here are the sheer size of the sensor. It’s quite a bit larger, to the point that it’s protruding from the chassis and looks to mirror the overall shape of the fingerprint sensor. That, and the array of various sensors is now located beneath the flash.
A Pixel-dense leak
According to this source, which 9to5Google claims is reputable, both the Walleye and Taimen models will ship with IP68 waterproofing, a highly desired feature that’s been mulled over in the rumor mill for some time.
One bit of disappointing news is that this source has also confirmed that both models will skip the 3.5mm headphone jack. Interestingly, they stated that Google is currently devising “damage control” ideas as to how it can allay the inevitable fury of port purists upon the Pixel 2’s announcement.
It’s possible that it might do just this with the rumored Google Assistant headphones that could be tossed in the box, or maybe it will double-down on its commitment to high-quality wireless audio codecs – one of the big benefits coming with Android Oreo.
Each leak pieces the new Google Pixel 2 together a little more, and if the rumored October 5 launch date is true, we don’t have all that long to wait and see these highly anticipated phones ourselves.
